


Not with a Bang, but a Whimper

by Alixtii



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bechdel Fix, Blindfolds, Episode: s01e07 Angel, Episode: s02e03 School Hard, Episode: s02e10 What's My Line Part 2, Episode: s07e22 Chosen, F/F, Female Protagonist, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Rough Sex, Season/Series 06, Sunnydale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-12
Updated: 2007-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-02 22:45:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>History of a love that wasn't; moments from ten years of an AU Buffy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not with a Bang, but a Whimper

* * * * *   
   
_Ten years ago. . . ._

“You were my sire,” says Spike. “You were my Yoda. Now look at you. Thinking you can be one of the good guys. It’s not that easy, mate.” Bolts fly at him from the Slayer’s crossbow. Deftly, he dodges.  
   
A voice can be heard from the rafters: “Buffy, it wasn't Angel who attacked your mom. It was Spike!” They fight. For a moment, Spike has the upper hand. In another moment, the Slayer will be dead.  
   
“I’m sorry, William.” Spike explodes into dust at the end of Angel’s stake. Across the globe, in Prague, a vampire weeps. It isn’t Darla.  
   
* * * * *  
   
_Nine years ago. . . . _

“Look at all the people. Are these nice people?”  
   
Darla sighs. “Dru, I told you to stay in the car.” The infernal creature is unable to follow even the simplest directions.  
   
“This one has power. I could feel it from the outside.”  
   
Well, yes. The Annointed One now rules what’s left of the Master’s once glorious Order. He, perhaps, can provide what is necessary to heal Drusilla.  
   
Darla strokes a finger across her grandchilde’s exquisite face. “I’m a princess,” Dru says.  
   
Darla, the queen, can’t disagree. She’ll show them how things should be run. “Me and Dru, we’re moving in.”

* * * * *

_And then. . . ._

Now she’s well again, Darla obligingly ties Drusilla’s hands behind her back, slips a blindfold over her eyes. Dru’s dressed only in thin white shift, which Darla pushes up above her waste. “Here comes the candle to light me to bed,” Dru says. “Here comes the chopper to chop off my head.”

Darla ignores Dru’s rambling, running her hand down the inside of the vampire’s thigh. The flesh is unblemished, bruises and scars all healed in the months since, time during which she didn’t dare hurt Drusilla.

That time’s over. Darla vamps, then sinks her teeth into Dru’s thigh.

* * * * *

_Five years ago. . . ._

__Darla never doubted the Slayer would return for more. After all, she had slept with quite a large number of men in her life and unlife, and not a few women besides. She had learned how to give pleasure over the years; indeed, it was as natural a part of her as breathing had been when she was alive, as the infliction of pain was now that she was dead. (Not that the two things, pleasure and pain, were quite as separate as many supposed.) Darla knew how to work a mark, how to bring him to satisfaction while keeping him wanting more. Buffy wasn't, in the end, any different than all the other clients and prey (there hadn't been a difference, not really) she had pursued over the years. After that first time, that first taste, Buffy belonged to Darla.

Just like Darla has belonged to Buffy for longer than she'd care to admit.

Darla knows how Buffy thinks, knows because she has studied the Slayer, knows because Buffy is drawn to the darkness and is more like Darla than she thinks, knows because once you bring her to your bed every woman is the same.

"You belong here, Buffy," Darla whispers as she rips open the Slayer's blouse. She knows that Buffy knows the words to be true, that she hates the fact that they are true. She knows the words dig into the Slayer and draw blood, that they hurt her far more than blade or whip or fangs or claws possibly could. She is the Slayer, after all, made to withstand physical torture, but she is also just a little girl, mere putty in Darla's hands. "In the darkness. With me."

Darla knows that as much as the words hurt, it is a pain that Buffy yearns for, for which she begs in every way but the one which the last modicum of the Slayer's pride forbids. No matter, soon enough that too will be consumed by Buffy's self-hatred, and the girl will be groveling at Darla's feet, crying out for the vampire to take her. It will be a delicious moment when it comes, and in four hundred years, Darla has learned how to be patient.

She tears away the slayer's shirt and brassiere, taking care to rip them beyond repair. The Slayer will limp home with a tale of a particularly vicious vampire on her tongue, and it won't even need to be a lie.

_* * * * *_

_Today. . . ._

The Slayer--no, _a _Slayer--stands on the elaborate stone terrace of an ancient mansion, almost as old as her lover himself, and stares into the Roman sunrise. It's particularly majestic this morning, a display of reds and golds and oranges and yellows. It is as if the sky is on fire, and Buffy can't help but remember the blaze of fire, Darla's hands in hers, before it immolated the entirety of Sunnydale. The Hellmouth. Her home.

"You look troubled, _mia cara_." The Immortal steps out onto the terrace, crosses over to her, puts a hand on her shoulder. She has the urge to pull away, but doesn't.

"It's just . . . Darla. Sometimes, I wonder what happened to her. If she's in heaven or hell, or. . . ." The possibilities are too numerous to mention, but she knows that he knows every last one, cut off from him forever though they may be.

"You loved her," he says, and she frowns. Even now, she's not completely sure. Her feelings towards Darla--well, they weren't anything like her feelings for Angel, or Riley, or Faith, or the Immortal, and she doesn't know what that means.

But they are strong, that she knows for sure. Besides the lust and the anger and the friendship and the fear and the trust and the hate, was their love? She doesn't know, doesn't know how to find out, isn't sure she would want to if she could. It's easier not being sure how she feels.

He smiles. "She was very beautiful," he says, and his eyes stare off into space, past Buffy and beyond into centuries past, and she takes his hand in hers as they both remember an extraordinary and remarkable woman.

"Yes," Buffy agrees, "she was."

And wherever Darla is, heaven or hell or someplace else (someplace else with a view, no doubt), she is still beautiful, Buffy is sure, and will be forever, world without end. Amen.

* * * * *

_This is how the world ends._


End file.
